


Golden Flames

by David_Kesil (DaveJean)



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Beatles Music, Fluff, Future, M/M, Songfic, Trip - Freeform, little angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25841941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaveJean/pseuds/David_Kesil
Summary: Travelling isn't easy for Simon and Baz, Chosen One or not. When they have to face their insecurities and desires for their future, there is only one spell that can bring Simon back, and it will take all of Baz's magic to pull it off.What they will see, might be the brightest of the days to remember.
Relationships: Penelope Bunce/Shepard, Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Kudos: 29
Collections: Golden Days: a Simon Snow Series zine





	Golden Flames

**Author's Note:**

> This was my piece for the Golden Days Carry On/Wayward Son Fanzine! It was such a blast.
> 
> For songs, I recommend 2 while listening:  
> Movement by Hozier  
> Here comes the sun, by The Beatles
> 
> Thanks to Penpanoply for their art featured for this!

**BAZ**

You are the Sun, Simon. You heal. You burn.

And now, in this _bloody_ moment in time, I am looking at a sun caged in white marble, your expression one of pure fear.

I know what I must do. There is no time to lose, dear.

And yet, here I am, admiring you in the midst of this damned battle, one we end up finding sooner or later, all because of the smoke that has stained your soul, my soul.

Sometimes, I have to be the one saving your bloody arse.

“ **Bend over backwards!** ” I shout at the top of my lungs, and the creature hits the floor with a loud thump. “What are you?”

They speak in what must be Greek, but as far as my Ancient Greek knowledge goes, I hardly understand a thing. They move as if they were levitating, just an inch over the dirt that now covers my favorite Oxford shoes. _Tch._ I’m losing too much time; Simon needs to be brought back soon.

I light a fire in the palm of my right hand, and I can’t help but smile at their face: terrified, aware of what’s coming for them. But there is something else I cannot quite place, and I stop, high, looking over them, trying to look menacing while avoiding their eyes. (It works)

“If you leave now, I just might let you live.”

I can feel how they look at me — _no—,_ how they stare at me. Their long, curly black hair cascades over their shoulders, thick locks moving in an unnatural way. The eyes, Simon turned to stone, the swift hissing of the air around us.

Oh. So that is what they are.

“Please” their voice has a dense accent.

“I thought you didn’t speak English.”

“Please.”

They stop, standing still, and I realise what might have triggered their attack. Their eyes were meant for me, I’m sure. I lick my fangs with the tip of my tongue, mouth closed, and I force them up my gums. I open my mouth again.

“See? Vacation. Holiday.” They do seem less frantic, less nervous, but I’m still uneasy because of Simon. I point at him, wand still in my hand. “Don’t move.”

They nod, and for a second I swear I can see their blood moving up and down their throat, their heart beating like a drum.

I touch Simon’s cold face and, in a bold and stupid move I may regret, I close my eyes. I cast the spell, singing.

“ **Here comes the sun…** ”

**SIMON**

Why is the Crucible here, in front of me?

It is surrounded by a familiar fire, yet distant. My old personal flame: magic. I walk toward it or, rather, I try to. My body doesn’t answer me. I can _feel_ it: the weight of my head, my clasped hands, my knees slightly bend and my feet on the floor (or whatever is underneath me, I can’t look down).

I feel it, but I can’t move it. I can’t move _me_.

Not even to open my mouth and scream.

_Baz._ Baz is here, next to me, next to the Crucible. He is eleven again: shorter, his widow peak less visible, his hands smaller and curiously vulnerable. He is lifting them, trying to get a hold on me. But my body won’t react —I can’t touch him. I know he is cold to the touch; I know it well.

_Baz, please. Come. Touch me. Help me._

That’s when I hear it. A voice, a sweet yet rich baritone that carries a song with it. I can’t make out the words. It’s not clear enough.

_Please._

**BAZ**

For Aleister Crowley’s sake, Basilton Tyrannus Grimm-Pitch, _focus_.

It’s a tricky spell, and Bunce would never let me hear the end of it if she knew about this. I know there are several ways you can de-petrify someone but… songs are powerful. We are far from home and magic changes everywhere. If there’s something you can rely on whenever you are, it’s pop songs.

“ **Here comes the sun, and I say**

**It’s all right…** ”

I see us bickering at each other in our room at Watford, that last floor in Mummer’s House; I see him changing clothes, happy to be in his colorful uniform, sometimes covered in butter stains that lasted more than Bunce’s patience. I can see him on the top of a hill, against the last rays of sun, watching football practice and supporting whatever team I wasn’t in. I see us on our room again, when my leg still hurt and his face was kind and scared, and we were surrounded by stars, up high.

I can see him covered in sweat, dirt and blood, holding Ebb’s body and shouting the Mage’s name.

_Focus_ , I repeat myself. _Only on the good, on the great, on the…_

I can see the sofa, the cider bottles, the unkempt bed. I can see those bronze curls long and greasy, the violet circles under his eyes and the shape his red wings left on everything. I can feel again the despair, the loss, how small and fragile that flame was.

I need to keep singing.

**SIMON**

“ **… it’s been a long cold lonely winter…** ”

I can hear him. His voice is every-fucking-where but he is not _here_. I don’t even know what’s here: it all keeps changing, shifting. It was just a bloody trip to Greece. Time to chill after Shep and Penny’s wedding, a short holiday whenever Baz wanted to go to learn about old magick and ruins while I ate new food. But: BOOM! Simon Snow does it again, problems follow him, and he cannot even go on a bloody trip with his husband in peace.

It’s cold. There’s something freezing me in place, and I still can’t move, but it’s getting into my bones and it _burns_.

I remember the cold water down in Blackpool, that weekend Shep insisted on visiting the place. There’s nothing there, almost everyone goes to the beach at Brighton (or somewhere cooler than Blackpool _)_. The water was incredibly cold and the sky grey, but we went there and stayed for a week. Baz didn’t even complain: he packed his stuff in less than a day and threw it in the back of the car, waiting for Shep and Penny to finish. Maybe he was tired after his final exams, and anywhere with a bed sounded good to him.

I got to see him in swim trunks. (I will never forget that.)

It was different from the beach, back in America. We had to come back fast, before we could even talk, kiss or… well. Before anything. Before everything.

And now I’m trapped here, I can’t find his hands, his eyes, not even the sight of his long, black hair.

And it’s freezing.

I can’t see him or my friends here.

**BAZ**

**“… Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here…”**

I can feel him.

His hands are still cold and lifeless, but there’s something inside moving, a deep, warm energy that seems to emanate from a deep well. It feels like magic.

I try to picture that night in America, surrounded by fireflies; I can see him on the back of the car, in the sun, smiling in a way he hadn’t in months… But there are strange memories everywhere: Lamb’s eyes, Agatha scared, vampires surrounding us, flames… many flames…

“Baz…”

It’s him.

**“… here comes the sun…, it’s alright…”**

I smile. Hard not to, now I hear him, now it’s working. Simon, please, answer. Sing with me. Be bright as you only know how to, light up the world with your smile, with your moles, with your hands and your kisses and the way you hug me every night in bed, up in the altar beneath me…

“Simon…”

**SIMON**

I think I know what he’s doing. It must be. A _song_.

How can anyone as smart as Baz be so stupid?

The worst part is that is _bloody_ working. I can feel my tiptoes, the tips of my fingers, my nose. It’s all warming up.

Fucking genius.

Even if I can’t really, I close my eyes and focus. Something good, something warm, something… I got it. He’s probably going chronologically because it’s the _logical thing to do._ But he keeps forgetting that sometimes bigger works better.

I can see Regent Street, walking with Penny on a rainy Saturday.

“It can’t be that expensive, can it?”

“Simon, it’s a wedding ring, of course they _are_ expensive.”

“Fuck.”

“Why?

“Well, I’ve been saving up for a few years, but I don’t know-”

Penny shook her head and smiled like she knew something I didn’t. Which is, all the time because she pretty much knows everything.

“Why now? You’ve been together like, what, six years already? I honestly thought Baz would be the one asking.”

I had to laugh.

“He has been dropping hints after Mordelia’s wedding, but… he’d never ask me. It’d have to be perfect.”

“And you’re the king of better done than perfect.”

“You two spend too much time with your noses buried in books, while the world keeps on going by impulses, you know?”

“I could argue with you there, but… I’m too excited!”

She smiled and did a little dance, just when the signs of the Oxford Circus station popped up. To the left and… there was the shop.

“It does look expensive” Penny’s eyes were wide open, even if the shop wasn’t that big.

But yes, it did look expensive.

“Here we go.”

**“Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…”**

I will always treasure his smile, wide and open, his eyes twinkling like two stars… the moment I left Basilton Grimm-Pitch wordless.

**BAZ**

Something is not working, and it’s not on Simon’s side.

He is getting warmer, a flame that’s coming back with the force of a supernova. I can feel how hot he is because it hurts on my skin, it’s almost blinding.

And I’m getting cold.

I can’t stop singing.

Am I doing this right?

Am I losing myself to save him?

_Again?_

**SIMON**

Something’s wrong.

I will move in seconds, all my muscles are back, my bones are screaming, and my skin is even blistering, radiating something I don’t think I can’t control.

The music isn’t stopping, and Baz is getting colder. His hand is in mine and I am pouring, I’m giving it all to him and he keeps getting colder. The bloody spell is backfiring in his face and I still can’t fully move but-

“BAZ!”

It’s weird to listen to my own voice again. I can fix this. I _need_ to fix this.

**BAZ**

I’m surrounded by darkness.

My mouth opens and closes by reflex now, and the spell is pulling me down, into something thick, something… dead. Can I even be less dead?

It has just started with that image. Our wedding day, just one year ago… I remember the mirror I had in my room, how I looked at myself as I dressed, as every button was closed, and every line placed properly on my body. My hair not entirely put back (Simon’s request), Father’s cufflinks, a bracelet that was my mum’s, and another from my stepmother. It all looked perfect. I looked perfect.

I felt like a liar.

I didn’t deserve it. Simon. My friends.

Happiness.

**“Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting…”**

That’s not my voice.

Someone else is singing, someone else is… calling.

**SIMON**

I clasp my hand over his, and I shake him back to life, back to me, back to… everything. I need him back. I can finally open my eyes and see him, absorb him, but he is just _so_ pale, he is almost… gone.

And then I notice it. There’s a hand on my shoulder, neither warm nor cold, but I can see the movement of black locks at the corner of my eye.

I know better than to look.

“Help?”

Eight years ago, I would have said no. Seven years ago, back in America, I would have refused, scared of what other magickal creatures could do to harm us.

I close my eyes and, without letting Baz go, I move aside so they can get closer.

If Shep could see me, I think he’d smile.

“His mind is… clouds.” I sense them shifting, the air moving between our three bodies, and a hiss in the air. “’needs something… glad.”

I keep singing.

**BAZ**

“Baz?”

He calls me after knocking, and I pause to check if my fly is up.

“Snow, you can’t come in, it’s bad luck.”

“Agatha told me you were taking too much time, is everything…” Simon says, as he opens the door. All the air I was holding in my lungs leaves me at the sight of him, his grey clean-cut suit and sky-blue tie striking, framing his now broad shoulders and thin waist. “…alright? Oh, Baz.”

I realise I’m close to tears when he holds me, and Crowley, am I glad I haven’t done any makeup yet. He holds the same way I hold him when we knew about the Mage, when he cried for days once we checked the records and the old pictures of Watford Bunce’s parents had, that Fiona kept. I hear her boots outside, her pace nervous as Simon was the only one in the room with me. Some things never change.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m…” How could I even start?

**“Little darling, it’s seems like years since it’s been clear…”**

There are tears on my face, but I’m not sad anymore.

“Can you heart that?” I ask Simon, but his puzzled face says it all.

“Hear what?”

**“Here comes the sun, it’s alright…”**

“That! Someone…” I try to gesture, but the words are at the tip of my tongue, I’m smiling and-

Everything goes fast forward. I’m not in that big, cold room surrounded by mirrors, but at the altar, beneath him and his gleaming smile. There are two gold rings in front of us, I can hear my stepmother crying, and I’m so, so happy. It’s the same strange happiness I felt with out first kiss, that first night we kissed and kissed and hugged and forgot we were meant to kill each other.

**“Here comes the sun…”**

He is calling me.

**“It’s alright.”**

There are hands, lukewarm and scolding hot, gripping my arms, my shoulders, anchoring me.

**“It’s alright.”**

Bloody husband of mine.

When I open my eyes, his are red and on the verge of crying. But it’s alright. We are alright.

**SIMON**

“But that’s not how Granda’ tells it!”

“Don’t listen to him, Nat, you know he likes to add some extra for the drama” I smile at her round face, where some of her black locks fall, touching her tiny button nose. Her smile has gaps everywhere, she is giving the Tooth Fairy too much work these days.

“It’s always better with some drama, Snow” Baz answers from the other side of the living room, still checking that ancient spell book Prisha found in Egypt. It makes the house smell damp and full of static, but he keeps saying it’s important, and I’m busy enough with little Nat.

“See? All for the drama, he keeps calling me Snow after fifty years!”

She laughs loudly, rolling over the carpet. The walls brim with magic, clear as the water of a mountain river, soothing and free.

“But who was the one that petrified you, Gramps?” she asks when the laugh finishes, still curious and full of questions. As curious as her mother was at her age.

“Ask your Granda, he’s the magickal expert!” We still get postcards now and then from Crino, but they are still busy with the Magickal Creatures Reservation in south Greece. Minotaurs can be difficult to manage, or so Shep says.

“Granda, Granda!”

Baz closes the book and smiles to Nat, taking her by the waist and sitting her on his lap. He has a few more lines on his pale face, but he doesn’t look a day older than thirty. I catch a glimpse of his smile as I play with my golden ring, and I stay there, sitting on the sofa, looking at how Baz explains about Crino’s hair and their spells, how the minotaurs and fairies signed a treaty against all odds with the magical community in Athens. Nat’s eyes are bright and luminous, two lights that crown his dark skin, just like her father. I still remember how Lucy was at that age, bright, loud and always in motion. Pure energy. Our little sun, as Baz called her back then, but it seems like once your kids are over thirty, nicknames aren’t necessary anymore.

Life goes too fast sometimes.

I go back to that place, to that morning in Mykonos when we agreed on him going back to therapy, on us separating a little from the magickal spheres. It was the day we decided that, as soon as we could, we would adopt. Then came Lucy, Lukas and Danyara. A house that was never quiet, where there were no bulk beds and no sad summers.

A family.

“Dear?”

Baz’s voice wakes me up; I don’t remember nodding off. He is smiling, and I am hungry and tired.

“Is she asleep?” I ask after a yawn.

“Yes, now it’s our turn.”

I stand up, and a melody plays so clearly in my head I have to hum it.

“That song again?” Baz sighs, he never listened to The Beatles with the same heart after Mykonos.

“Well,” I dance a little, getting into his personal space and placing a kiss on his cheek, “ _here comes the sun, do do do doo…_ ”

He links his left arm with my right, and give me one of his tiny, up to the eyes, smile.

“ _It’s alright_ ” he follows me, singing.


End file.
